Pledge Break
by Trinity1.0
Summary: Things didn't work out the way they expected


**PLEDGE BREAK**

"You know, you don't have to do this."

He gives her a sideways glance before answering.

"I know."

She sighs as she turns away from him.

"In fact I wish you hadn't."

Jack spits out a humourless laugh, "Story of our lives Carter." and Sam continues her gaze outside.

Opening his door, Jack steps out, moves around to the passenger side and opens the door for Sam. She's a little surprised that she still waits for him to do this. He's not surprised that he still does.

Jack walks Sam into the airport carrying her bag of necessities. Silence follows them through the long open spaces, at the check in counter and into the waiting area.

Hesitantly, almost reluctantly, she turns her attention to him. This man that she had waited so long to love freely and now finding herself on the verge of giving up on the once held dream of '_always_' in his arms.

He sensed her mood. In spite of what now lay between them, their innate sense of each other hadn't changed. Jack wasn't sure it ever would. Years of living and dying together apparently couldn't be erased by years of mere existence in each other's space.

With hands in his pockets, Jack rocked slightly on the balls of his feet and looked around, taking his gaze off Sam. In his typical eloquence he says, "So."

Sam shook her head slightly before looking up at him. She remembered briefly how his monosyllabic answers used to endear him to her. Could make her laugh or smile in even the most life threatening situations. Now, it aggravated her that leaving him for two months on an unplanned expedition could evoke only the most mundane of responses from him. Following suit, she matched him, "So."

Jack knew that this was about a break from him, from them, more than about the possibility of finding naquada treasure in some remote galaxy. He just didn't know what to tell her, and therein was one of their problems. It seemed there were some dark areas remaining in him that no amount of light could conquer, and that, he knew, was the source of much of her frustration.

Realizing that he wasn't going to say anything else, Sam adjusted the bag on her shoulder and prepared to move into the boarding area. She didn't plan on trying to make this easy.

It was what it was.

Throughout the course of her life, she'd figured out the Gate system, precisely compensating for stellar drift, had built a naquada generator, had blown up a sun. But the equation of Samantha Carter + Jack O'Neill = Temporary separation, still mystified her. How the hell they had gotten here was more than the Astrophysicist and woman in her could unravel. So turning her back on Jack, Sam began to walk away.

"See you when you get back."

It sounded more like a question than a statement and she turned to look at him.

"Does it really matter if you do?"

Silence again, but she didn't answer for him, didn't give him an out, didn't make it easy. Sam needed to know and Jack hadn't told her. Turning her back away from his silence, she began to move off again when she heard him call.

"Samantha."

That creased her forehead and stopped her in her tracks. She was 'Samantha' to him on only the rarest of occasions, so much so that she could actually remember each time he had called her that. Sam turned slowly, a million things going through her mind in the time it took her to face Jack again. Wondering, in spite of herself, if she really wanted to hear what he might actually tell her.

Jack still stood there, his eyes searching, looking for something he wasn't sure had been completely lost. Perhaps he found it in her eyes because, standing there in the middle of their uncertainty, he told her, with more resolution than either of them had dared to voice in recent times.

"**Always**."

She reacted visibly when his word reached her. As though the 'Always' he'd spoken to her years before began to rise up in her from the dead place that it had been buried, finally finding some life again. Brushing against her heart and touching her eyes as it rose.

He saw it and for now it was enough. Jack watched Sam turn hesitantly towards her two months away from him, but he picked up what she had left behind. He would hold on to it dearly, and give it back to her when she returned.

Hope.


End file.
